1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic camera which captures an image of a subject, and particularly relates to an electronic camera which can detecting a characteristic portion of a subject, for example, a face.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been proposed a camera which, in order to focus on a face of a subject when the subject is a person, detects the face portion of the person in a field captured by the camera and autofocuses on the detected face area.
However, it is conceivable that such problems that the face is not detectable or detection accuracy is low may occur depending on a shooting situation or shooting environment, which may lead to confusing a user.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-215403 discloses an electronic camera having a face recognition function and performing focusing control according to the eyes of a subject.
However, the electronic camera in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-215403 has a difficulty in focusing on the eyes of the subject when the subject closes his or her eyes or wears glasses, and the focusing operation thereof is low in stability. Therefore, there is still room for improvement.